


Heart-to-Heart

by crackinthecup



Series: Ends and Beginnings [3]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bickering, Gen, Light-Hearted, M/M, gothmog and thuringwethil take it upon themselves to (lovingly) roast him within an inch of his life, mairon is too serious for his own good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24856825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackinthecup/pseuds/crackinthecup
Summary: In which Gothmog and Thuringwethil have cottoned onto the fact that Mairon is in a new relationship and decide to interrogate him about it over a flagon or five of ale.
Relationships: Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron | Mairon (implied)
Series: Ends and Beginnings [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2112774
Comments: 12
Kudos: 82





	Heart-to-Heart

“I’m happy for you.” Thuringwethil propped her elbows up on the table, resting her face in her hands. Her dark eyes shimmered in the low light of Utumno's mess hall as her gaze settled on Mairon.

“Thank you,” Mairon said automatically, then blinked at her. “Wait, why are you happy for me?”

“Your new relationship,” Gothmog boomed as he returned to the table with three fresh flagons of ale. He set them down with great gusto, some of the ale spilling out over the already sticky surface of the table, but they had all had one too many drinks to notice.

Mairon gaped at him. “My what?”

Gothmog and Thuringwethil shared a knowing look.

“Come, come, Mairon, you can see it from a mile away,” Thuringwethil said. “You smile more. There's colour in your cheeks. You've got a spring in your step.”

“The other day Ehtitamë asked me if you were ill when you didn't tell her off for messing up the furnace temperature for those new spears you're making.”

Mairon tried to come up with something clever to say; a joke, laughter, moving on to a less perilous topic of conversation. But the alcohol was buzzing through his head, scattering his thoughts. He could feel two pairs of eyes resting heavily on him, and he buried his face in his flagon of ale to avoid his friends' gazes.

When several seconds passed and it became clear that Mairon had no intention of reemerging from his flagon, Gothmog elbowed him in the ribs with so much drunken vigour that Mairon choked.

“Spill the beans, then,” Gothmog said, meeting Mairon's scowl with an unconvincingly innocent smile. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Neither Gothmog nor Thuringwethil dignified that statement with a response.

“Is it the herald, I wonder?” Thuringwethil said, glancing around the mess hall as if Langon would suddenly materialise from the shadows to prove her right. “He’s pretty, isn’t he? And you do so like pretty things, Mairon.”

Gothmog grunted in disagreement. “Pretty or no, Langon is missing some of his marbles and I say that as a friend. Remember when he rappelled down from the highest tower on a dare? Lord Uptight over here would throw a fit within hours of being cooped up with him.”

Beside him, Mairon bristled. “Lord Uptight?”

Gothmog gave him a pointed look. “Have you _met_ you, Mairon? You don’t leave your room if there is one strand of hair out of place on your head.”

Mairon opened his mouth, then promptly shut it again. He made a rude gesture in Gothmog’s direction and took a generous sip of his ale.

Thuringwethil rolled her eyes at their antics. “Fine, then, not Langon,” she said, bringing them back to more important matters. “I've never seen you spend time with anyone else. Is it someone we don't know? Have you been having secret trysts in the hallways with a stranger?”

“That's not possible,” Gothmog declared with absolute certainty. “He works more than anyone else I've ever met. He wouldn't have had time to meet someone new in between meetings with the master.”

Thuringwethil drummed her fingers on the tabletop, lips curling upwards in a teasing smile. “You _have_ been spending an awful lot of time with Lord Melkor lately.”

Her tone was light, the joke no more than easy bait. Gothmog joined her in laughing gleefully at the mental image of their lord doing something as mundane as stealing hurried kisses between meetings about war and doom and the fate of the world.

Mairon, on the other hand, was deathly silent. He stared unblinking into the depths of his ale.

Thuringwethil was the first to notice. She kicked Gothmog under the table to get him to stop laughing.

“What was that for?” Gothmog grumbled, leaning down to rub at his sore shin. Thuringwethil jerked her head towards Mairon, and at his friend's obvious unease Gothmog subsided into silence.

A beat passed, and then another and another. The realisation was immense, stealing the air from their lungs, making it impossible to think.

The shock of it eventually wore off. Gothmog let out a low whistle as Thuringwethil murmured, “Fuck me.”

Mairon stole a longing glance towards the exit, wondering if he would be able to make a run for it without Gothmog tackling him to the ground.

“Well, then.” Gothmog cleared his throat, tried to take a sip of his ale but only succeeded in making himself cough violently. “How about that.”

Thuringwethil suddenly laughed, so loud that the orcs seated behind her flinched. “I’m proud of you, Mairon.”

Of all the things Mairon might have expected his friends to feel, pride was not one of them. “ _What?_ ”

“Aiming as high as you can go in your choice of partner.” Thuringwethil raised her flagon in a drunken toast. “I support that.”

“I appreciate that, Thu, but it's not... I'm not doing this for _status_!”

“Not what I meant,” Thuringwethil said, cocking her head to the side as she pinned him with an intense stare, “but it’s interesting that that was your first thought.”

“Anyway,” Gothmog said before Thuringwethil and Mairon could start bickering about the depths of the Maiarin psyche, “the real question is, what's the master like?”

“You know what he’s like,” Mairon replied, giving a small shrug. “You both serve him just like me and everyone else here.”

“True,” Gothmog conceded, “but we don’t know him like you do.”

“Not _intimately_ ,” Thuringwethil added with a wicked smirk.

Mairon rolled his eyes. “There is no way I’m telling you any intimate details.”

“Oh, you will,” Thuringwethil threatened cheerfully.

“No.”

“Yes.” Gothmog scooted his chair closer to Mairon, preventing his escape.

Mairon looked from Gothmog to Thuringwethil and back again. He let out a heavy sigh. There was no force on earth that could stop this conversation from happening.

“He’s nice?” Mairon offered, quickly draining the rest of his ale in hopes that the alcohol might ease the strange flutter in his stomach; it did not.

Thuringwethil arched an eyebrow at him while Gothmog scoffed into his flagon and said, “Lord Melkor is many things, but he is not nice.”

“He can be,” Mairon protested, his cheeks burning partly from the alcohol and partly from the thrill of revealing something he had kept hidden for so long. “Okay, look, _nice_ might not be the right word here, but he's... intriguing.”

Thuringwethil started cackling. “Intriguing, eh? You, my friend, are fucked.”

Mairon opened his mouth to retort – he was not _fucked_ , thank you very much, he felt a perfectly normal amount of excitement about being on the receiving end of his master’s attentions – but Gothmog cut him off.

“Speaking of,” the Balrog smirked, “when did it start? How did it start?”

Mairon couldn't quite suppress a smile. His friends’ enthusiasm was infectious.

“A few weeks ago,” he replied, smile widening, voice low and conspiratorial. “He kissed me in the throne room.”

“How scandalous,” Thuringwethil grinned.

Gothmog thumped him heartily on the shoulder. “I bet he did a lot more than just kiss you.”

“ _Oh, my lord, please take me, my lord,”_ Thuringwethilsaid in a comically breathy voice, laughing at the murderous look on Mairon’s face.

“You are both horrible, horrible people,” Mairon muttered, shifting in his chair to glare squarely at Thuringwethil, “and _you_ are going to buy us another round.”

He threw his coin purse at her. Thuringwethil caught it effortlessly, and leaped out of her chair with a delighted cackle that Gothmog echoed.

Mairon dropped his head into his hands. “I’m not drunk enough for this.”


End file.
